Is Your Anemia Management Process Really Working?

Anemia is a chronic condition affecting 30 percent of the global population, and it’s vastly undertreated. The condition is well known for causing troublesome symptoms in individuals, including fatigue, weakness, shortness of breath, and irregular heartbeat, anemia. Additionally, it can cause significant complications for surgical and obstetric patients and can send healthcare costs soaring. For example,

• Chronic heart failure and chronic kidney disease – both of which have a high correlation with anemia – account for 50 million patient encounters per year.
• Anemic orthopedic surgery patients have twice as many readmissions and fail to bundle nearly 100 percent of the time.
• Patients with anemia average a 50-percent longer SNF LOS after surgery.
• Anemia increases healthcare costs by 30 percent.

It’s safe to say that anemia is a problem worth solving. Yet for too many health systems, identifying and treating anemia means manually compiling and tracking information from multiple data sources. This is not an ideal anemia management method, for several reasons:

• It’s time-consuming
• It’s prone to error
• It leads to negative downstream effects, including reduced patient safety and lower patient satisfaction

Faced with these drawbacks, some healthcare organizations, crunched for time and resources, opt to track only anemia management metrics that are mandated by federal or state regulations. That’s not a recipe for strong anemia management.

What does your anemia management process look like?

To assess whether your health system’s anemia management program is working, you need a comprehensive analysis based on your health system’s unique case load and patient mix. To evaluate your anemia management program, you’ll need to answer questions like these:

• Is your health system avoiding unnecessary blood transfusions and using 100 percent of blood products appropriately?
• When does your health system identify anemic surgical patients?
• How many care plans does your health system have in place to address perioperative anemia?
• Is your health system missing revenue opportunities related to anemia infusions?
• Is your health system reducing avoidable costs and retaining as much of its standard procedure payment or bundled payment as possible?
• How much can your program improve by putting an automated anemia management system in place?
• What impact would a reduced length of stay have on patient satisfaction, outcomes, and costs?
• Which surgical populations are at the highest risk for blood loss, and how does that correlate to your health system’s surgical patient volume?

Robust anemia management begins by asking the right questions. Accumen’s MyBloodHealth® Anemia Management Opportunity Assessment provides a valuable analysis to any administrator considering a new anemia management program or looking to accelerate an existing program.

Request your complimentary assessment today.